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Unreal Reality Show Concepts

I had planned to post about the upcoming British reality show Bestseller. Think American Idol for hopeful novelists. Or, more accurately, Pop Idol. But then I read about the Dutch program Big Donor Show, where a terminally ill woman with an inoperable brain tumor will select a contestant to receive one of her kidneys after hearing pleas from their families.

Outrage has predictably ensued, and one politician is trying to get the show yanked. But let's not debate the merits and morality of this particular program. Instead, let's try to top the shock factor by coming up with even crazier ideas. I'll get us started.

"¢ Death row inmates compete against one another in beer pong; each week's winners have their sentences commuted to life in prison.

"¢ High school seniors have their college applications reviewed by a CSI-like team. Did you really spend six hours a week volunteering through the Latin National Honor Society? If not, you're rejected. People with the most accurate resumes, regardless of merit, are accepted. Losers repeat twelfth-grade.

Your turn...

(Also, here are some other ridiculous reality show ideas that actually aired. Via The BBC.)

"¢ There's Something About Miriam
Six men were invited to spend several weeks wooing an attractive woman. Oh, they later found out the woman was a transsexual.

"¢ Space Cadets
They thought they had blasted off into space from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia -- but in fact, they were stuck in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.

"¢ Who's Your Daddy?
It must have seemed a good idea to the Fox network at the time -- take people who were adopted, put them before a line-up of strangers and ask them to pick their real father.

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Also on Mental Floss:

DID YOU KNOW? Marlon Brando hated memorizing lines so much that he posted cue cards everywhere to help him get through scenes.
He even asked for lines to be written on an actress's posterior. (That request was denied.)